Google Asks Government For More Transparency, Other Groups Push Back Against NSA

Nerval's Lobster writes "In an open letter addressed to U.S. attorney general Eric Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller, Google chief legal officer David Drummond again insisted that reports of his company freely offering user data to the NSA and other agencies were untrue. 'However,' he wrote, 'government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of FISA national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation.' In light of that, Drummond had a request of the two men: 'We therefore ask you to help make it possible for Google to publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures—in terms of both the number we receive and their scope.' Apparently Google's numbers would show 'that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made.' Google, Drummond added, 'has nothing to hide.'" Another open letter was sent to Congress from a variety of internet companies and civil liberties groups (headlined by Mozilla, the EFF, the ACLU, and the FSF), asking them to enact legislation to prohibit the kind of surveillance apparently going on at the NSA and to hold accountable the people who implemented it. (A bipartisan group of senators has just come forth with legislation that would end such surveillance.) In addition to the letter, the ACLU sent a lawsuit as well, directed at President Obama, Eric Holder, the NSA, Verizon and the Dept. of Justice (filing, PDF). They've also asked (PDF) for a release of court records relevant to the scandal. Mozilla has also launched Stopwatching.us, a campaign to "demand a full accounting of the extent to which our online data, communications and interactions are being monitored." Other reactions: Tim Berners-Lee is against it, Australia's Foreign Minister doesn't mind it, the European Parliament has denounced it, and John Oliver is hilarious about it (video). Meanwhile, Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who leaked the information about the NSA's surveillance program, is being praised widely as a hero and a patriot. There's already a petition on Whitehouse.gov to pardon him for his involvement, and it's already reached half the required number of signatures for a response from the Obama administration.

Comments

Untrue my ass

[udachny]

Google chief legal officer David Drummond again insisted that reports of his company freely offering user data to the NSA and other agencies were untrue. 'However,'

- bullshit. Catch 22 in action.

They can't disclose this legally or they will face massive government attack from all fronts, be it IRS or OSHA or EPA or SEC or whatever agency, or however many agencies for however long a stretch of time, maybe even personal threats are used.

You just can't know because in a Police State these things are all catch 22 based. You can't ask and you can say, you just have to do what you are told and if you don't, then you are fucked. That's part of what I am talking about when I speak of individual freedoms being destroyed by the mob that votes for bigger and bigger government on the premise that bigger government is a way for the mob to steal from a minority (businesses) to subsidise themselves, and it doesn't matter to the mob, how these things are done.

Google, Drummond added, 'has nothing to hide.'

- sure sure, Google will not be hiding user information from government, but when it comes to their own money, it's well hidden from that very government.

headlined by Mozilla

- I was and am always suspicious of the way Mozilla handles self-signed certificates.

AFAIC CAs are the real threat when it comes to the man in the middle attacks. Can't CA provide NSA with another valid certificate, which will be placed into your machine silently because of CA, which creates a much simpler MITM attack than actually doing it the way all these people supposedly concerned about such attacks talk about, when it comes to self signed certs? I don't trust CAs at all, says who that NSA is not working with every one of them?

As a side note, Snowden's just may become what Mohamed Bouazizi was for Tunisia, but I wish him to stay alive. Whoever saying that he is a 'traitor' is a fucking snake tongued piece of shit. Giving away government secrets is not treason if it is government that is breaking the law.

Real treason is directed AT THE PEOPLE, not at any government. Government abusing its power to snoop on people is an illegal act of Treason against people and the Constitution, don't be fooled.

Re:It should be illegal but isn't, that's the prob

[udachny]

He didn't miss it, read his words carefully once more, he is all for it. He is all for it when it suits his purposes, he is just outraged that it can be also used against him.

He wants the governments to discriminate, he just doesn't like when it's HE who gets the short end of the stick.

Re:It should be illegal but isn't, that's the prob

[udachny]

Yes, and that is what is called forming a government, the problem is not government itself the problem getting them to keep their eye on that goal

- wrong, that's called building a successful business.

The "profit" from a well run public sewer/water works is that WE don't die,

- wrong, the profit is the reward that the investors get for providing the public with clean water and a working sewer systems.

the profit from a well run UHC

- USA used to have that before the mob broke it. It was cheap health care where people paid for most routine stuff out of pocket and 2 (two) dollars a month was one of the most popular health care insurance plans that provided catastrophic coverage. That's what provided cheap and sustainable health care without growing government in process, it actually was best in the world at the time before gov't cockroaches destroyed while the mob was cheering.

If you're not interested in that then fine but other people are and it has nothing to do with them trampling your rights and everything to do with "serve[ing] people in the most efficient way possible"..

- right, most efficient way possible has nothing to do with government. Fact: efficiency is no priority for governments, only growing power is priority and you don't grow power to reducing costs, you grow power by growing the apparatus around you.

Re:Petition

[cold fjord]

A real patriot for which country? His last known location was the People's Republic of China. He has been invited to live in Russia by Putin. He is bringing with him a laptop full of stolen intelligence agency data.

Brass balls? No. More like chutzpah to claim it was for the good of Americans.

In the past, American patriots worked in the United States to make it stronger. Some of them were even war heroes. Not these new "patriots," they steal secret data from the intelligence agencies and make it available to America's adversaries. Some day this sort of "patriotism" may even lead to a successful attack on the United States, killing large numbers of people. Will it still be "patriotic" then?